Meshell Ndegeocello

Berlin and go-go

Meshell Ndegeocello was born Michelle Lynn Johnson in West Berlin on 29 August 1968, where her father, a saxophonist in an Army band, was stationed. The family moved to Washington, D.C. when she was three. She went to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and Oxon Hill High School, took up the bass in high school, and learned her trade on the city's go-go circuit with Prophecy, Little Benny and the Masters, and Rare Essence. In New York she was active in the Black Rock Coalition.

She took the surname Ndegeocello, which she says means free like a bird in Swahili. Early pressings of her debut carried stickers explaining how to say it, and her labels spelled it several ways before it settled as Meshell Ndegeocello in 2001.

Maverick

A showcase in Los Angeles in 1993 led Maverick, the label part-owned by Madonna, to sign her as one of its first artists. She told The Believer that she had to choose between Maverick and Prince's label. Plantation Lullabies came out that October. Vibe's Greg Tate called it the future of the funk, it drew three Grammy nominations, and it is counted an early landmark of neo-soul, a movement she is credited with helping to start.

In 1994 her duet with John Mellencamp on Van Morrison's Wild Night reached three on the Hot 100, her biggest hit, though she was frustrated that it led many listeners to take her for a rocker. The same year she played bass and spoke on Madonna's I'd Rather Be Your Lover and recorded Nocturnal Sunshine with Herbie Hancock.

Peace Beyond Passion

Peace Beyond Passion, produced by David Gamson and released on 25 June 1996, took on Christianity, racism, sexuality and homophobia, with three songs named after books of the Bible. The most direct of them, Leviticus: Faggot, tells of a young gay man cast out by his family, and its video was cut by MTV and refused by BET. The album reached 63 on the Billboard 200 and 15 on the R&B chart, her most commercially successful record, and was nominated for the Grammy for Best R&B Album. Her cover of Bill Withers' Who Is He (And What Is He to You)? went to number one on the dance chart.

She spent that summer on the H.O.R.D.E. tour, saying she would much rather play for people than make records. In 1997 she played bass on the Rolling Stones' Saint of Me, and in the late 1990s she played Lilith Fair.

A restless catalogue

Bitter (1999), produced by Craig Street with Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Coleman and Doyle Bramhall II among the players, was called a modern masterpiece by Billboard and named album of the year by Vibe. After that she moved from label to label: Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape (2002), Comfort Woman (2003), The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel (2005), The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams (2007), Devil's Halo (2009), cut in seven days, Weather (2011), a Nina Simone tribute (2012), Comet, Come to Me (2014) and Ventriloquism (2018).

She wrote Nova, the theme for Queen Sugar, and in 2016 premiered a theatre work, Can I Get a Witness? The Gospel of James Baldwin, in Harlem. In 2021 she won the Grammy for Best R&B Song for Better Than I Imagined, a Robert Glasper record with H.E.R.

Blue Note

The Omnichord Real Book (2023), her first album for Blue Note, won the first Grammy for Best Alternative Jazz Album. No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin followed on 2 August 2024, the centenary of Baldwin's birth, and won the same award. Synonym (2026) brings back David Gamson, producer of her first two albums, for fifteen covers sung as duets by singers of the same gender.

She has thirteen Grammy nominations and three wins, and her bass has served Chaka Khan, Alanis Morissette and Pat Metheny among many others. She has been married to Alison Riley since 2005.

I would much rather go and play for people than make records.

Meshell Ndegeocello, 1996